Maybe the diva of distressed investing should have listened to her mother.

Lynn Tilton, 56, now wishes she hadn’t sent out a sexy Christmas card showing her clad in a red lace teddy, cowboy boots and a Santa hat in 1998.

“My mother told me I would regret it,” she told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview. “And I hate when my mother is right.”

Tilton’s regret comes as she’s locked in a battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused her of ripping off investors in her private-equity fund and pocketing $200 million in undeserved fees.

The founder of Patriarch Partners has counter-sued and is trying — so far without success — to get the case moved to federal court from the SEC’s in-house administrative court.

Several of her clients are cooperating with the feds.

When she sent the raunchy card, she was in her late 30s, with long black hair. A second card showed her clad in black lingerie with a whip in hand.

Tilton was on her way out of a firm called Amroc Investments. Two years later, she started Patriarch.

Tilton told Bloomberg Businessweek that she sent the card to “very few” clients — only those who were so close to her that they often asked her what color her underwear was.

“It didn’t offend me. It was part of the interaction of what I did,” she recalled. “My joke to them was, on my way out, I showed them the color of my underwear.”